The purpose of this manual, which accompanies a video program, is to provide general background information for foreign language teachers who are, or soon will be, teaching in total, partial, or two-way immersion classrooms. Part of a series of video programs, this manual highlights special considerations for immersion teachers as they plan and…

On September 30, 1993, Far West Laboratory (FWL) and the California Assessment Collaborative (CAC) sponsored a cost/benefit forum to examine cost-analysis issues associated with the development and implementation of instructionally sound assessment. This report highlights the central ideas addressed at the forum, incorporates the audience…

Increases in class size, time constraints, and class material have pressured educators to develop better ways to present instructional material; this pressure has led to numerous teaching innovations, including many in the area of individualized instruction. This paper focuses on a history of critiques of individualized instruction in the 20th…

The effectiveness of an evaluation model for interactive television courses was studied. Inquiry was conducted with distance education graduate students using a structured, open-ended questioning format to obtain their authentic voices about a traditional model: Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID), a facilitator-based model how to open the…

There has been a recent increase in attention given to the school counselor's role in family counseling. Family counseling can be a useful way to provide early intervention with families whose children exhibit difficulties in school. However, many school systems do not adequately supervise counselors. Additional training in family counseling and…

Labeling literary or artistic periods is always tricky, and labeling an emerging period (such as this post-postmodern one) is, of course, impossible. Harold Bloom has labeled this period the "chaotic age" because of the canon wars that have raged among factions. One writer with a place in any canon and who is an anodyne to the chaos of…

This paper describes how the Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute's Trades and Services Occupations Department developed and integrated into the curriculum a course on employment skills to help their graduates to secure and retain employment. The project included building consensus among the staff and department heads that the course was…

Testing and evaluation are important components of effective instructional software development. Many evaluation approaches today are multifaceted, employing a combination of methodologies and multiple data collection techniques. In this paper, several approaches to evaluation are discussed. Computerized tracking systems, videotape recording…

This book tells the stories of teachers who, guided by evolving understandings of constructivist mathematics learning, are meeting the challenge of reconstructing their teaching practice. Although the stories all reflect the experiences of a single in-service program, SummerMath for Teachers, each exemplifies an aspect of the change process…

A growing number of education reformers are justifying their reform strategies by pointing to the findings of developmental brain research, theories of information processing, and the needs dictated by today's information-rich world. They advocate integrative education, which places students in a holistic context. This digest describes the…

With the purpose of highlighting the lessons to be learned from immersion programs, this digest presents selected findings from research carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of immersion programs in Canada and the United States. These lessons are related to the importance of: (1) integrating language with content instruction (when second…

This document describes the procedures for and results of the external evaluation of the workplace literacy program for underemployed garment industry workers with low English skills at Chinatown Manpower Project, Inc. in Chinatown in New York City. The document describes the evaluation design and methodology as well as the evaluation results,…

This study investigated student satisfaction at a comprehensive regional university using a questionnaire grounded in the disconfirmation theory of customer satisfaction. A total of 165 students enrolled in business courses were surveyed at the beginning of the semester regarding their expectations of the university, with 104 students completing…

In the educational literature, responses to surveys commonly serve as the source of data for many empirical articles. Whenever a survey is used as a source of data, the response rate can greatly affect the potential generalizability of the findings. Using Monte Carlo methods, this study examined the effects on sample estimates of the population…

This book describes a training technique in which an art activity called a touchstone exercise serves as the basis of an action-oriented leadership development program. Part 1 describes the context in which the touchstone exercise was developed and details the process of setting the stage for and conducting it. Two case studies illustrating the…